Vice Prez’s blue tick restored

M Venkaiah Naidu

Twitter on Saturday removed the blue verified tick from the personal handle of India's Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu for a few hours. It was later restored. However, the official handle of the Vice President of India @VPSecretariat, which was run by the VP's Secretariat, continues to have the blue badge.

"The personal Twitter handle of the Vice President was not being used for some time because his tweets were being posted from his official account. It came to our notice today (Saturday) morning that the blue tick has been removed from Vice President's personnel Twitter account. Subsequently, we talked to Twitter over the issue and they informed us that the algorithm had been removed automatically as the account was not active for long," a source in Vice President office said. According to Twitter, the blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. To be verified, an account must be notable, authentic, and active. The VP's account, it said, has been inactive since July 2020. "To keep the account active, the account holder must make sure to log in at least every six months," a Twitter statement said.